Home Network Audio Managers

Whether you're an audiophile or just like background music, you can significantly improve the power and convenience of your home audio system with one of these home network audio managers. MP3 and other digital formats will be at your fingertips, along with a bunch of cool new functionality.

Contents

General physical description
The black and silver SONICblue Rio Digital Audio Receiver, the smaller of the two devices, looks like a clock radio. With measurements of 3 x 9 x 9-inches (HWD), the unit fits easily on bookshelves or nightstands. The Rio uses a backlit, LCD display with dark characters on a light blue background. The Rio unit looks like it belongs in a bedroom, family room, or possibly a home office as a standalone device, not stacked with other A/V components--its rounded appearance gives it a more consumer electronics look.

Technology Description and Specifications
Using a Cirrus Logic EP7212-CV-D ARM 32-bit SOC/CPU, the SONICblue Digital Audio Receiver runs on Linux and has 32MB of EDO DRAM for converting music files and buffering streaming content. Subsystems include a Broadcom BCM4210KTF HPNA chip and a Crystal LAN CS8900A-CQ3 Ethernet chip.

The integrated amplifier, which produces 10 watts per channel, only operates through the bare wire speaker connectors. If you use powered speakers like those that come with most PCs, you plug them into the Rio's Line Out port. To use a conventional stereo amplifier or receiver with the Digital Audio Receiver, connect via the RCA Audio Out jacks. The Line Out port and the Audio Out ports both output unamplified data signals, for better sound reproduction via external amplifiers.

Connectors

The jacks and connectors on the back of the Rio Digital Audio Receiver are well marked. From left to right the ports are for Power, Ethernet, Phone (a pass through for a handset if you use HomePNA), Wall (the HomePNA connection), bare wire speaker connectors, Line out, and stereo Audio out (RCA) jacks. To the right of the network connectors are network Link and Activity lights.

Front Panel Buttons and Remote Control
The Rio's front panel controls include a power on/off button, multimedia play/pause, stop, forward, and reverse buttons on the left side, and in the center below the display Repeat, Random, and Menu buttons, and a scroll and selection dial on the right side.

The infrared remote control included with the Rio Digital Audio Receiver measures 6.26 x 2.0 x 0.8-inches (HWD) and uses two AAA alkaline batteries. In addition to labeled buttons that perform the same tasks as the buttons on the front panel, the remote has an alphanumeric keypad and buttons labeled List, Search, Info, and Station. The List button accesses predefined favorites from the current playlist. The Search button lets you use the alphanumeric keys to search the current list. The Info and Station buttons are not currently supported.

Audio File Storage and Organization
Music files accessed by the Rio unit must be stored on a single PC, which is referred to as a music server, and must also have the included Audio Receiver Manager software installed. There are two ways to view the file structure and software used by the Rio audio manager. Because the device and its management software require that all music files and playlists be on a single computer, you don't have to worry about settings on numerous PCs. If several people in your family are avid rippers or downloaders, however, getting everyone to save all tracks to one computer may be a pain. If you allot one PC as the home network music server and use it for no other purpose that might work, because it might remove ownership issues, but it doesn't address the extra step people will have to take to be sure they move their files and lists to the designated PC. Using the analogy that printed photos are often not placed in centrally accessible albums, but scattered throughout a home in various drawers, music tracks will probably inevitably gather more naturally in decentralized locations on your network.

Operation
When you turn on the Rio Digital Audio Receiver, it connects with the Audio Manager application running on the host PC (a little flag on the PC task bar changes from red to blue to indicate a successful connection with the Audio Receiver). You push the Menu button on the remote or the front of the case to open the Audio Receiver menu. With the remote, you make choices and selections with Up, Down, and Enter keys. On the receiver, the large button on the right side of the front panel is used to choose or select options.

The first time you turn on the Rio Audio Receiver it connects with the Audio Manager application running on the host and acquires the list of titles and playlists. Because it needs to look only at the contents of one PC, this process can be faster than with the Turtle Beach AudioTron, which has to first identify all the PCs on the network and then search each one.

Menu structure

When you press the Menu button on the front panel or the remote control the above display appears.

You can set several basic audio characteristics with the menu, including volume, balance, bass, and treble.

The Select Music menu lets you choose tracks for playback by artist, album, genre, title, or playlist. The Audio Receiver supports MusicMatch formatted playlists stored on the same PC that stores your audio files.

When you select music by genre, one choice is to play all tracks.

While an audio track is playing the status screen shows the song and album titles, artist or group, running time, file sample, and file type (the example below is an MP3 file sampled at 128KHz).

The Rio Digital Audio Receiver's compact size and ability to work directly with conventional un-powered speakers makes it convenient to use in most any room in your house with network access--because it's small and uncomplicated, it's even easy to move around.

Bruce Brown, a PC Magazine Contributing Editor, is a former truck driver, aerobics instructor, high school English teacher, therapist, and adjunct professor (gypsy) in three different fields (Computing, Counseling, and Education) in the graduate departments of three different colleges and universities (Wesleyan University , St. Joseph College, and the University of Hartford). In the fall of 1981 he was bitten by the potentials of personal computing and conspired to leave the legitimacy of academia for a life absorbed in computer stuff. In the fall of 1982...
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